The World we all share is given to us in trust. Every choice we make regarding the earth, air, and water around us should be made with the objective of preserving it for all generations to come.

August A. Bush III

A passion, an obsession, a romance, a nice acquaintanceship with trees, sand, and water.

Bob Ryan

Golf balls are attracted to water as unerringly as the eye of a middle-aged man to a female bosom.

Michael Green

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life."
"In God's wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness."
"I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in."
"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."
"Wilderness is not only a haven for native plants and animals but it is also a refuge from society. Its a place to go to hear the wind and little else, see the stars and the galaxies, smell the pine trees, feel the cold water, touch the sky and the ground at the same time, listen to coyotes, eat the fresh snow, walk across the desert sands, and realize why its good to go outside of the city and the suburbs. Fortunately, there is wilderness just outside the limits of the cities and the suburbs in most of the United States, especially in the West."

As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening, through the smog across the poisoned watchers of our native earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether we really wish some future universal historian on another planet to say about us: "With all their genius and with all their skill, they ran out of foresight and air and food and water and ideas," or, "They went on playing politics until their world collapsed around them."

U Thant

One might consider an ideal series of parks as you might a great water system, using the metaphor of green water in massive lakes emptying into larger reverse and small creeks, rushing narrowly over waterfalls and following placidly and broadly through the flat countryside in a continuous sequence of parklands. Then it curls around and through cities in man-determined forms, held back by reservoirs, channeled over aqueducts and finally rising -- as in Rome, in fountains, small ones in dusty corners and large, baroque ones in mighty plazas. Thus, the fields and trees of parks should be, as water, not scattered oases such as Yosemite, but a weaving, interconnected green mass that changes in size and purpose, but always inter-penetrates forcibly but gently the urban, suburban, and rural scene.

William M. Roth

For there are some people who can live without wild things about them and the earth beneath their feet, and some who cannot. To those of us who, in a city, are always aware of the abused and abased earth below the pavement, walking on the grass, watching the flight of birds, or finding the first spring dandelion are the rights as old and unalienable as the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We belong to no cult. We are not Nature Lovers. We don't love nature any more than we love breathing. Nature is simply something indispensable, like air and light and water, that we accept as necessary to living, and the nearer we can get to it the happier we are.

Louise Dickinson Rich†

Since water still flows, though we cut it with swords
And sorrow returns, though we drown it with a wine,
Since the world can in no way answer to our craving,
I will loosen my hair tomorrow and take to a fishing boat.

Li Po

The enjoyment of the choicest natural scenes in the country and the means of recreation connected with them is a monopoly...of very few rich people...For the same reason that the water of rivers should be guarded against private appropriation and the use of it for the purpose of navigation and otherwise protected against obstruction, portions of the natural scenery may therefore properly be guarded and cared for by government...The establishment by government of great public grounds is thus justify and enforced as a public duty.

Frederick Law Olmsted

No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movement of water, or gardening -- still all is Beauty!